How travelling to London, Stockholm and Nashville can benefit humans and our planet

While eco-minded travel has gone mainstream since the late Nineties, a fresh wave of pioneering projects are helping humans survive as well as the planet

Once, the idea of conscious, truly sustainable travel was either a bit woolly and overly worthy (vegan Birkenstock-wearers who only holidayed by train) or a bit token (“Save us washing your towels and you’ll save the planet!”). Today, however, not having at least one eye on sustainability feels out of step and, as travellers, increasingly we strive to tread lightly, leaving a positive impact rather than a hefty footprint.

Around the globe, there are projects that prove you can combine style and do-gooding, from zero-waste cocktail bars and hip coffee shops that donate their profits to overseas-aid projects, to smart hotels with charitable foundations and nifty eco-friendly designs. Now a new wave of pioneering spots are ramping up their good credentials further by putting front and centre the very people that society often overlooks.

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE WITH CHOCOLATE GANACHE AND BEETROOT ICE CREAM AT MELBOURNE'S LONG STREET

Where to go: LondonIn London, the private House of St Barnabas club, with its wood-panelled rooms and elegant Georgian architecture, may be just the sort of Soho address you’d expect its media-savvy, culturally minded members to hang out in. But it also provides wide-ranging opportunities for socially excluded adults to get on-the-job experience as waiting staff or in back-of-house administration, as well as ongoing support and mentoring as trainees go on to look for jobs elsewhere.

And 16 years on from Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen championing the idea that disadvantaged teenagers could form a winning restaurant team, the new Dean Street Café has an on-trend, sustainable plywood interior by up-and-coming ethical design studio Nina+Co, a menu overseen by Aldo Zilli and a raft of culinary- and barista-training initiatives for former rough sleepers now being supported by the Centrepoint charity. By ordering your flat white, you’re not just putting money in a pot, but giving (and receiving) a fulfilling experience that few Hackney hipster joints could replicate. Its provenance can be found in its people.

DEAN STREET CAFE'S PLYWOOD INTERIOR

Also recently opened is the Coal Rooms, a wood-fired-grill restaurant that will train homeless people, and serve a nose-to-tail menu in the former ticket office of the Grade II-listed Peckham Rye Station. Chef Sam Bryant is behind the project, in partnership with the socially minded Old Spike Roastery, two local restaurants and the coffee-based charity Change Please.

ROASTED COD'S HEAD WITH CRACKED BARLEY AND EGG YOLK AT COAL ROOMS

Where to go: StockholmThe trend for compassionate consumerism, which places people’s welfare alongside profits, is gathering pace globally. In Stockholm’s Old Town, the Grillska Huset café is known for its cardamom buns as much as for its mission of employing and educating the long-term unemployed. Similarly, Syr, in the Dutch city of Utrecht, and whose tag line is “food that tastes good and does good”, champions refugee integration. Its airy café, which pops with yellow-framed chairs, snazzy tiles and a brightly painted ceiling, employs mainly Syrian exiles, and serves a hybrid of Middle Eastern and European dishes, such as Caesar salad made with za’atar-spiced grilled chicken with a pomegranate and sumac dressing. As Lourée Maya, the founder of Kynder.net, a website for socially conscious travellers, puts it, “If you don’t act with kindness, it’s not hospitality. It’s a business transaction.”

Where to go: MelbourneIt’s an idea that is encompassed at Long Street Coffee in Melbourne, which has become a hub for community-minded endeavours in the city. The café, in a converted chocolate factory in the foodie neighbourhood of Richmond, checks all the millennial-style touchpoints (polished concrete, bare-brick walls, a menu of Instagram-worthy Aussie dishes) alongside a training programme for refugees and asylum-seekers who, over the past two years, have hailed from everywhere, from Iran to the Gambia.

Where to go: GuatemalaWhile many of these social enterprises focus on a single cause, others have a broader ambition. Good Hotel opened in Antigua, Guatemala, last year with staff mainly comprised of local single mothers and a scheme that feeds profits into educating children living in poverty. But it combines its good causes with a genuine community vibe, and its location in a colonial mansion mixes pale woods and a palette of creams and whites with sense-of-place touches such as huipils displayed as art and tiles by local artisans.

Where to go: NashvilleMeanwhile, in Nashville, celebrity-photographer Jeremy Cowart is putting the final touches to his plans for the Purpose Hotel, which will plough profits into anti-people-trafficking projects and child sponsorship, while sourcing all of the interiors products (soap, linens, furniture) from social enterprises or charity partnerships. Cowart is no conventional do-gooder: “My mission is to explore the intersection of helping people and creative ideas, from photos and apps to art and hotels.” After all, why should you give up the fun stuff just to be able to make a difference? Changing the world in your sleep sounds like the way forward.

How to spot the socially conscious crewThis vocally compassionate gang doesn’t pay lip service to good travel – they’re committed to the idea of good living in every sense. That means they’re as happy talking about composting as they are sourcing ethically made furniture for their home office (a living-roofed, solar-panel-powered cabin at the end of the garden). At check-in at the fabulously designed yet sustainable hotel they’ve found on Bouteco, they’ll ask probing questions about the water-conservation methods. The queue forming behind them will have plenty of time to admire their Burlap People luggage, handcrafted in India, and their reclaimed-leather espadrilles from Juta Shoes, a company that provides employment for women in East London. And they are never seen without their reuseable stainless-steel straws. At home, the hot topic of conversation over dinner (rustled up from the weekly ugly-veg delivery box) is whether to decamp the family to Bali for a few months so the kids can do a term at the Green School. But before going anywhere, they’ll need to consult ethical blog thegoodtrade.com on which carry-on items to take – a bamboo toothbrush is a must.